Wednesday, May 01, 2013

A Welcome To New Arrivals: A Second Experienced Lawyer Recommends How To Zero In On The Truth

Some Questions

My legal colleague Some Alibi hammers home in the post below that the trial jury were not fools. They decided for guilt unanimously, based on many compelling evidence points.

(1) Do you know how many hard evidence points there are? Literally hundreds. This is a very evidence-heavy case. And at trial in 2009 the prosecution did an excellent job. Between February and June, in about a dozen one-day sessions, they presented an overwhelming case and tied together all the points.

(2) Do you know how many conclusive evidence points are required for a finding of guilt? Just ONE. If it is definitive enough, a single piece of evidence can decide any case. Some Alibi posted a damning footprint example the other day which BY ITSELF could have seen Sollecito convicted in any UK or US court. There are examples too for Knox.

(3) Do you know how many evidence points were discredited during the trial and the anulled appeal? In fact it was NONE. A spooked defence kept well away from the alibi evidence, the cellphone evidence, the computer evidence, the mixed-blood evidence, the obvious crime-scene re-arrangement, and most eye-witness evidence. <

The annulled appeal in fact focused only on two specks of DNA and one eye-witness account, and even those, as the defenses admitted, were not conclusively undermined. They didnt come close to proving two other killers had even been in the house, although the Supreme Court had already ruled (in Guede’s final appeal) that Meredith had been attacked by three killers.

Formidable Evidence

My colleague Kermit and I now want to present for you some Powerpoint slides which will introduce you to most of the formidable evidence in the case, in the same way the jury processed it.

Finally I would point out a challenge I made for ANY lawyer who believes Knox and Sollecito are being railroaded (for which there is zero obvious reason why) to answer all the open questions Knox and Sollecito wont face.

Comments

The compilation of so much proof is impressive. Thank you again, Attorney Raper and Kermit.

The broken glass on top instead of beneath clothes plus the fact that easy grab valuables weren’t touched.

I liked your Kilroy Wasn’t Here with Rudy as Kilroy at Filomena’s window. If that sloppy Guede had busted through the window there would have been his careless signature of palm prints, fingerprints and general disaster which was just how he left signs of himself in the other rooms in every form (feces, bloody footprints, DNA.) Then again he didn’t take time to wipe things away, not having to live there like Amanda did.

Thanks to you and Some Alibi and Kermit for the incredibly capable work to build a file on the evidence. It’s selfless and tremendously valuable.

Re “...that media, en masse it seems in some quarters, have been so susceptible to being manipulated…”

I suspect it is less being manipulated and more lazy journalism. The copy-paste approach in the need to publish SOMETHING in a vacuum of mass-content-free-news overload.

I fear the internet and the continous demand for new news is the undoing of many serious publications. They just can’t compete, and those that do carry out investigations are easily dismissed and ridiculed, insulted, as they are classed as fringe, not mainstream.

@devorah Knox nodded yes while saying No. We should believe her body, her words are lies.

@hungarian, TruthWillOut, everybody posting. Thanks. Please keep commenting on this fiasco of Knox’s first tv interviews and her inept book promo. A book as Nell points out on PMF where Raffaele Sollecito who spent 4 long years behind bars to protect his girlfriend of a week, is not even mentioned or thanked.

Made me mad, how Knox said Meredith was pushed into a closet like she was “nothing”. She pretends to mean she is shocked by this confused info, but she is making her own value judgment.

Three on a Couch? namely Foxy, Edda, and Curt on the gray couch in Diane Sawyer’s abc news set, for interview. When Edda starts talking, Foxy looks down and a bit abashed and hiding it with downcast eyes. She puts Curt in his place by saying she can tell her mom everything, perhaps more than mom want to hear, she grins.

Peter Quennell rightly predicted this talk show gambit would be a public choke with the Knoxes given enough rope to hang themselves. Too right.

Furthermore I bet the fallout at the Knox lilypad after this will not be pretty. They’ll be at each other’s throats coulda shoulda woulda, why did we ever get in front of cameras again!

Knox seems so hardvoiced and unnatural with what she says trying to excuse her “how could she not (have suffered) she got her f…ing throat slit?” Supposedly this outburst of profanity joined to Meredith’s body was merely her reaction to being angry at the awful things done to Meredith. Yet her attitude toward Meredith continues to sound muted and indifferent or downright contemptuous when she says basically with disgust that Meredith had managed to get herself killed in the house they both lived in and “it could have been me” who was killed. Instead of this dire thought bringing up some mercy and nostalgia for the poor girl who could easily have been Amanda slaughtered at home, she just sounds angry, as if the shift of focus to Meredith is all a huge inconvenience and same with the cottage being off limits to Foxy as a result.

Through many of the talk shows and interviews she sounds scared to death and extremely defensive. Strange when it’s her big chance to reveal all her innocence. Her fear shows through body language as she exits the interview to waiting automobile. During questioning she often bows her head and dodges eyes. The mask of prison is firmly in place, she has learned to put on the poker face. She reverts to her energetic and powerful rockclimber self rarely, but one time while sitting alone on the couch with Sawyer present, she starts jerking her arms up and down moving them frenetically almost like a Mussolini fist pump or a cheerleader move. This is while she’s saying how she was once a happy carefree student launching toward adventures, going to Perugia to be her own person and to take life by the horns. This active courageous outlook she said she got from her mother.

In an earlier segment it is up to Curt Knox on the end of the couch with Edda and Amanda to hammer home the most important point that the book is his daughter’s way of telling the Kerchers and the world that Amanda had nothing to do with Meredith’s death.

Knox completely overlooked that small matter when asked by Robin on Good Morning America, what message do you most want people to hear?

Need we be startled that Knox said the main message of the book was nothing like “I did not kill Meredith Kercher.” Her answer to Robin was that she wanted everybody to know Amanda, to understand Amanda, who had temporarily disappeared into a storm. We get it. That long time out of the limelight while others dealt with her story and self-made problems TO SAVE HER STUPID LIFE truly distressed her. Must have hurt to have others managing her image since she had done such a great job of it before.

These TV talk shows have boomeranged on Amanda. They were like a communal fist shake from the entire Knox entourage who should have waited with the little dignity they still had intact, waited a bit longer until the court case is closed. Their family impatience is the tragedy that hit Meredith Kercher. Amanda’s odious arrogance is growing.

Thanks to those who keep pointing out the sociopathic traits of manipulation, and the peculiar Amanda ruse of continual obfuscation. She’s always hedging her bets verbally. Like after she said about Meredith’s throat cut remark (for which she seems not really sorry but wishes she’d been “more mature” as she calls it) then she jumps back on the party line about I didn’t really know what had happened to Meredith. She sounds snarly when she describes how at the crime scene they yelled, “A foot. A foot,”. She heard hollers of a wardrobe (armoire, closet?) and sounds in this interview almost angry that the poor hysterical Filomena and others who were horrified and truly aghast at finding Meredith’s body behind the door cannot make sense of it immediately to Amanda in perfect English. She seems to be sneering that they are grasping clownishly for one or two slippery puzzle pieces of a scene about which she knows all. She just wants to hear them SAY IT, to confirm her vanity of power.

one brief obsevation. Yes the nod that appears to unconsciouly answer yes to the question “Where you there that night”? is notable. Also When she says “I was angry…. thinging about what Meredith was ..must have gone through that night.”

Why the self correction from the more specific use of .“was”? Did Knox intend to say “was” going through that night. Surely that “was”..if intended to say what Meredith was going throught that night is a much more specific use of the word ..placing her there at that moment. Why the immediate self editing shift to say..“Must have been going through that night.”?

The crime scene footage used by ABC..if real..in an ongoing judicial process is surely some
sort of legal breach. The whole interview is a breach of dignity and decency in my humble view.

In the Arias trial there is a woman who bills herself as the ‘Human lie Detector’ with her book “You can’t lie to me.” When the Arias trial comes to an end probably next week. I would love to see this woman focus on Knox. I forget her name but she is very very good at spotting lies or body movements that denote either fear or concealment.

@devorah, it struck me as very bizarre too the way she nodded yes while saying “no” when asked if she murdered Meredith. Almost like she is unconsciously willing someone to get it already. In fact, this has been my impression through-out. She wants to tell something and get it done with, but her family is not letting her do so. I don’t know, maybe we are reading too much into it but I was honestly so baffled by the body language that I asked one of my American friends if nodding head indeed means “yes” in America too.

@Sara
I agree that the tension of bearing untold and untellable truth must be very tense indeed, unbearable. She will never be able to be happy nor at peace, not doing so…I thought it was showing.
I have drawn and painted faces in my life as a fine artist, and am usually able to read faces well.

The whole interview was shambles if you ask me. She did not come across as sympathetic or nice or sorted-out. She came across alternately as self-obsessed, scared, cold and stupid. And it annoyed me so much that an experienced, seemingly-intelligent person like Diane Sawyer asked questions like “they said you cleaned up your DNA somehow” and AK replies with a profound “you cannot see DNA”. Well, thank you Einsteins. No one except you and your camp was stupid enough to claim that they selectively cleaned up “DNA”.

There are so many excellent points on which Diane could have questioned her. Yes, I know that some people found her behavior odd, but that was not the reason she was convicted. Yet, unbelievably most of the focus in the interview was on her behavior giving her a chance to keep repeating “I was shocked, I was young, I was confused, I was blah blah” and go on whining “it would have been me”. Absolutely no mention of the phone call to Meredith before calling Filomena, the contradictions in her stories, Raffeale’s statements where he throws under the bus and 100 other actual points that the camp cannot explain away. All in all, it looked like every question had been agreed upon and rehearsed in advance. Even then, she could not pull it off well enough to convince anyone.

Watched some of the Knox interview. Couldn’t believe her answering Sawyer’s questions with a verbal no yet shaking her head yes. Following is an interesting note from a Lie Detector professionals Brett & Kate McKay.
Synchrony. When deciphering truth from lie, watching for synchrony is key. Synchrony is the proper alignment of what is said verbally and nonverbally, between events and emotions, and between the circumstances of the moment and what is being said. For example, you normally expect a parent whose child is missing to be hysterical, begging for the police to get out there and find their baby. If a parent seems detached and aloof, something’s probably up.

Synchrony should also be present in the way a person moves their head. If a person’s head begins to shake either in the affirmative or in the negative as he speaks, and the movement occurs simultaneously with what he says, then you can typically rely on the veracity of the statement. However, if he does the head shake after he makes the statement, the statement is most likely false. You might even notice a person verbally saying “yes,” but shaking their head “no.” If what they say from their mouth doesn’t match with what their body says, you have a liar on your hands.

We actually don’t need a “human lie detector” to determine the truth of anything Knox says. She was convicted of a form of obstruction of justice that includes the lies she told leading to the arrest of Patrik, her boss. She claims she “chipped in” for drugs in her book; she said Sollecito gave her drugs in her testimony and that she didn’t know where they came from.

After watching the media circus this week, I am so grateful to True Justice for the work you have done. I am Canadian and was horrified by the CBC radio Current interview this morning that completely whitewashed Amanda Knox as being a victim of the Italian so called justice system that was so Medieval that they practically tortured the poor girl to lie about the murder. In a half hour interview, not one hard question was asked. Maybe chalk it up to funding cuts and lack of research but it was just so sympathetic and normally the Current is one of the best show on our public airwaves. Hugely disappointed, I did write an e-mail pointing out some of the many number of evidence points and requesting some rebuttal interview from, say, Nadeau, Vogt or the Kerchers.

But I just want to say again, excellent reporting from this site, really fine, and a relief from the media spin.

Huh? AK didn’t have time to grieve? To pay respect to Meredith?
She was the one who didn’t show up for Meredith’s Memorial in Perugia. And 4 years in prison was not enough time to grieve her?
My main question remains: Why didn’t she answer the questions in the court? That would have been enough for the Kerchers. Why did she write a book?

Got a big fright this morning waking up here in Australia, to hear AK was about to be interviewed on Radio National, the interview just happened. Here are a few choice quotes from AK I thought worth sharing:

“I wants to be judged on the facts, and that’s why I wrote the book”

“Whats most important IN ALL THIS is how helpless I felt”

“I wrote this book because I had an experience that changed me and haunts me, and what I was able to gain from this, I wants to share.”

“In the few hours after the murder we were all in the driveway, Philomenia was crying, no she wailing.. openly! I was just looking lost - what’s wrong with that? P saw what was beyond the door, I didn’t, I couldn’t even imagine it, that’s why I wasn’t crying”

“The police interrogated me for many, many days before i changed my story, they made me break down and change my story, then they wouldn’t believe me anymore”

“What happened to me was just like what happened to Meredith”

When asked if she would return to Italy she said she would like to, but she has to listen to the advice of her lawyers…

No what I meant was if this woman Janine Driver was allowed to have her say on public television concerning Knox it would do some good. I agree with you of course. Janine Driver is a body language expert by the way.

Many thanks for that news reference & a chance to see this other interview—I don’t have TV & missed the Diane Sawyer interview except for that familiar snippet.

What strikes me about this other interview—“live,” as they say—is that in many ways it’s better, of Amanda, evidently for its being live. One could put down her facial expressions with Ms Sawyer to self-consciousness (in process of its being taped beforehand.)

Note for one difference, if you compare them, that for Ms Sawyer Amanda’s voice is scratchy or croaky (I have a daughter who sometimes gets that scratchy voice & I don’t like it.) Almost nothing of that in this second interview.

And I don’t feel that she was faking it. What remains for me as a stupefying enigma, a Mystery in the ancient sense of that word—something never to be comprehended, never to be grasped—is Amanda’s own relationship to her memory of the event.

That it is lodged forever in her soul I do not doubt. That she is aware of it even as she speaks, as in this interview—I can’t quite believe. She is too much in possession of herself & conveys an impression of sincerity. She certainly relates to the interviewers & again, with less self-consciousness in this second (live) conversation.

Hard to know what’s ahead. I incline toward Peter’s judgments but feel less confident about the outcome.

@Spencer, she really said that what happened to her was similar to what happened to Meredith? That’s horrible. Her audacity really has no bounds. She says she could not “grieve” Meredith, yet she was the one who was making faces at RS, giggling and smiling after Meredith’s death. She was the one who did not attend the memorial. And even now, she keeps repeating “it could have been me” everywhere. It literally boils my blood to hear her say it….yes, it could have been you but it wasn’t, you are fine. So shut up about it already and have some respect for Meredith’s family.

I am really struggling to make progress on her book. I borrowed it from a library and I am so glad, I did not waste any hard earned money on it. I just cannot relate to anything she says and I think it’s extremely boring. Also, it’s hardly been a few chapters, and already the lies have started. She conveniently ignores to mention the first phone call she made to Meredith’s English phone. Then she says she and Meredith never ever argued. So, what about the fact that Meredith herself had told Stephanie that they argued (I think this was in Follian)? She talks about same old “hard drive destroyed” excuse for not having photos that show their “friendship”. But what about the phone or camera from which they were taken? Everything that is inconvenient or damning is ignored and same PR stuff repeated. And from here on, I think it’s just a long, made-up tirade about her prison “trauma”. She answers no questions, does not deal with anything controversial. What exactly is she harping on about being “heard”? There is nothing in this damn book to hear except whining about how unpleasant/inconvenient prison is.

The only thing in the clip I’ve seen where AK is sincere is she is sincere about wanting to be smart insofar as presenting as well as she can a carefully pre-rehearsed story-line.
She controls her face and words to rid them of spontaneity as much she is able to. She is determined and sincere about that.

When she is asked ‘Did you kill Meredith?’
.....she has to suppress a half- smile involuntarily happening from the left side of her mouth.
Why?

IIRC, Sollecito (round the time of his book promo and ‘ask the idiot’ question time) essentially contradicted Knox’s claims of ‘good friendship’ with Meredith, by saying that he knew there were tensions between Knox and the English girls.

Mr Brownstone, yes I think I remember it too. And for someone who openly admitted during trial that “after-all she knew Meredith only for a month”, she seems to have suddenly turned into the epitome of friendship. All this “my friend”, “my friend” in her book is turning my stomach. She says she was not allowed to “grieve” for “her friend”. Well, cry me a river. Weren’t you the one who said that it was far more important for you to get your own life back on track than grieving for someone whom you knew only for a month?

I have always thought Amanda and Raffaelle are guilty. I have read extensively the pro and con websites and come back to the simple facts—innocent people don’t have so many different, conflicting alibis; if Rudy acted alone, there wouldn’t be the extensive staged break-in; the cleanup that clearly occurred would only benefit someone who lived in the apartment (i.e., Amanda since the other roommates had alibis).

I also believe that the reason Raffaelle has never ratted out Amanda is because if he ratted out her, he’d be opening up Pandora’s Box, because then Amanda would unleash all the evidence she has on Raffaelle. And they’d both quickly implicate each other. (The whole ‘honor bound’ pitch that Raffaelle has always waved around and touted in his book is transparent crap. Give me a break?!)

I wonder, however, why did Amanda initially implicate Patrik? My guess is that she picked a black man to blame (given Rudy is black?) to throw the police off Rudy’s trail? Is that also so Rudy would not implicate Amanda and Raffaelle? I guess it is that simple, but would really like to hear others’ thoughts on this.

Also, I would just like to note that many, many people in the U.S. think Amanda is guilty, as we do Jody Arias and Casey Anthony. We are not all gun crazy lunatics who will defend sociopaths despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s just that unfortunately the extremists scream so loud they drown out the many more normal people that are the good parts of the U.S.

And I would like to say that I do believe very much that Amanda will crack someday, if not under the scrutiny of the media attention that she deliberately draws to herself, then for the simple fact that a person can only hide (and hide from) their true self for so long. Sadly, if she is not extradited and convicted as she should clearly be in this new trial, then someday she will do something else evil and sociopathic because it is her nature. This is what happened to O.J. Simpson a few years back, and he is now in jail. She will not be able to pull off the facade of the ‘good girl’ forever. Let’s just all pray that there is not another Meredith out there who will be hurt because she is free. Frighteningly, that is a significant possibility while she is free.

Loyalty is a term missing from the dictionary of Indian politicians. You need to thank…

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